To understand the capital budgeting, you must have to understand both parts of this term.
‘Capital’ in represents long-term, fixed assets, or the capital investment, such as a building or machinery. “Budget” is the plan that details anticipated revenue and expenses during a particular time period, often the duration of the project.
The term “capital budgeting” is the process of determining which long-term capital investments should be chosen by the firm during a particular time period.
Capital Budgeting versus Budgeting for Financial Assets
The financial process for determining the value of capital investment projects, such as buying a building or a piece of equipment and determining the value of stocks and bonds is exactly the same. They are all assets in which a firm invests.
However, there are two important differences:
- Businesses create capital projects, but financial assets pre-exist in the financial markets.
- The second difference is that investors in stocks and bonds have no influence over the cash flows of the companies they invest in, but a company does have influence over their capital projects through good financial management.
Independent and Mutually Exclusive Capital Investment Projects
Capital investment projects are some of the most important financial investments made by a business owner because they involve large amounts of money. Making a poor capital investment decision can have a disastrous effect on a business.
Capital investment projects can be divided up into two types:
- Independent capital investment projects are those projects that do not affect the cash flows of other projects.
- Mutually exclusive capital investment projects are those projects that are the same or so similar to other capital investment projects that they do impact the cash flows of another projects.
How is an independent or mutually exclusive project selected?
The most important thing that a business owner absolutely must do is compare the rate of return that the project will earn to the weighted average cost of capital or what the company pays to obtain financing. The decision rule is the if the rate of return is greater than the weighted average cost of capital, then accept and invest in the project. If the rate of return of the project is less than the weighted average cost of capital, then reject and do not invest in the project. This rate of return is actually an opportunity cost.
Factors to Consider when Making a Capital Investment Decision
Comparing the rate of return of a project to the weighted average cost of capital of the firm is not as simple as it sounds. There is a relatively complex financial analysis process the business owner has to go through in order to get there. Consider professional accounting assistance.
The business owner has to estimate the cash flows that will be generated by the project. Often, the cash flows are the single hardest variable to estimate when trying to determine the rate of return on the project. Both the quantity and timing of the cash flows have to be considered.
If you are writing a business plan, for example, you need to estimate about five years of cash flows. Usually, cash flows are estimated for the economic life of the project and, of course, should be as accurate as possible.